Welcome to CEHS

The Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services is committed to quality teaching, outreach and research. It is home to eight departments. Graduate and undergraduate programs are strengthened by an on-campus elementary school and three stand-alone centers. These offer services to the community and provide students with real-world service and research opportunities. Additional community services are provided by the individual departments.

CEHS graduate programs are ranked best in the state and 26th in the nation among colleges of education, according to U.S. News and World Report.

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Office of Research Services

The mission of the Office of Research Services in the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services is to enrich the research climate in the college by supporting proposal development; providing statistical consulting services; providing methodological training for graduate students; and nurturing faculty and graduate student research and collaboration.

Individualized Consultations

Faculty and graduate students from the College of Education & Human Services (CEHS) are eligible to receive methodological and statistical consulting assistance from the Stat Studio. This service is provided for free as a benefit to the faculty and graduate students of CEHS for up to 10 hours per semester. The vast majority of consultations can be concluded within this timeframe. Situations requiring longer-term consultations will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis with the client and the director of the Stat Studio in conjunction with the Associate Dean for Research of the CEHS. The Stat Studio does not provide consultation for course-related projects or tutoring.

Note: If the project is part of a thesis or dissertation, the graduate student must fill out the request form and book all appointments

1. Start by Filling out a Request Form (only once per project, paper, dissertation, thesis, ect)Request Form

The purpose of these forms is to provide the relevant background, research methods, and goals of the project to the Stat Studio consultants. The consultants must learn enough about your specific project to effectively help with the design of the research or analysis of the data. After filling out contact information, you will be asked to provide information that will help the consultant understand your research. Include details focused on your hypothesis, what you have accomplished, and what you would like help with.

Remember that the more information you provide, the better prepared your consultant will be to assist you. You may email other relevant information, documents, and questions to StatStudio@usu.edu.

Note: All graduate students must fill out their own request form and be accompanied by their advisor, mentor, or committee chair during their initial "INTAKE" meeting.

The purpose of the initial “intake” meeting is toclarifythe relevant background, research methods, and goals of the project. Your Stat Studio consultant will review your previously submitted ‘Consultation Request Form’ with you and ask questions to ensure they have a clear overview of the project and your needs. You can prepare for the initial meeting bringing a written list of questions and goals for the meeting. You may also bring along additional documents and data summaries that may help your consultant better understand your project.

Although consultants are often able to answer questions during your meeting, it is likely that you will needfollow-up assistance. Towards the end of your meeting, your consultant will help you determine if and when additional appointments are necessary. They will also be available to answer questions by telephone and email. Graduate students off campus may complete their appointments via telephone or through Zoom video conferencing.

For faculty and research staff: Stat Studio will provide assistance in research planning and study design, offer methodological and analytical advice, assist with the interpretation of results, run power and statistical analyses, generate graphical data displays, and review the methods and results sections of publications and grants.

For graduate students: Stat Studio will provide assistance with research planning and study design issues, as well as offer methodological and analytical advice, and assist with the interpretation of results, but will not conduct statistical analyses for student research.

For undergraduate students: Stat Studio will provide the same assistance that is available for graduate students, but only for Honors or Senior Thesis projects.

Examples of Available Services

Data management advice

Providing advice on developing surveys, rating scales, and tests

Guidance on sampling issues

Identifying the appropriate statistical test(s) for a research question

Prior to providing any Stat Studio consultant with any electronic form of your data, please follow all IRB protocol. This includes adding your consultants’ (including A-number and CITI certification expiration) to your protocol as co-investigators. This should be done as an amendment in Protis. Please contact Maggie Bice (435-797-1821 or maggie.duersch@usu.edu) with any questions.

Frequently, Stat Studio consultants are asked to assist in conducting sample size estimations for IRB or grant applications purposes. For these situations, if the information is provided in advance, it may be possible to provide you with sample size calculations based on a variety of scenarios prior to the meeting, which will then be discussed further during the meeting. The sample sizes for more complicated designs are probably best discussed during the initial intake appointment. For basic designs the following information is useful in conducting an effective sample size analysis:

The precise details of the primary aim of the study

The effect size you are attempting to detect, i.e. what difference, change, rate, percent is practically important?

The standard deviations of the means if you are comparing groups

Any limitation on the number of subjects you will be able to recruit within the study time-scale

We do not see providing services as an alternative to or a justification for not providing co-authorship on grant applications, presentations, or publications. We expect that in situations where the consultant makes substantive input to the design, analysis, or reporting of a project, this should be recognized by appropriate co-authorship of the deliverables that result. Ideally, this issue should be clarified at an early stage of any collaboration.

Prior to acknowledging our input to any report, abstract, paper, poster, or publication we would like to review the wording of the acknowledgment, and usually the document itself as well. This will avoid repetition of unfortunate situations where we have advised on a small part of a project, but acknowledgments have implied that other statistically flawed parts of a paper were also based on our advice.

We expect to provide services to most or all clients who seek help, although it may depend on the availability of consultants.

Due to existing workloads and because there are many study designs and statistical techniques, it is possible that the consultant is not an expert in the appropriate area and/or cannot offer a complete solution to your problem within the time available. In such cases, we ask for your patience as the consultant may be able to provide further information at a later date if you wish the problem examined in more detail. However, we cannot guarantee that it will be possible to do this within your time-scale and further work is at the discretion of the consultant.

Frequently, we find that individuals believe that their data require a simple and straightforward analysis. However, from our experience we find that this may not necessarily be the correct or most appropriate analysis. Therefore, it is useful to have as much information about the study and problem as possible in order to determine the most appropriate analysis.